Bar Environment Scene – UDK with DirectX11

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Description

This scene was an experiment with the Unreal Development Kit and its compatibility with DirectX11. I built the scene in about a week and a half, with the initial asset creation and the UDK implementation. A portion of the assets were developed previously for a Maya mental ray render, but a majority of the content was produced in one weekend specifically for UDK. Even the pieces that I had previously needed to be significantly reworked to be implemented in UDK.

There were a number of goals for this project. I wanted to take advantage of the core features of UDK and run the scene in real-time. I also wanted to use as many of the DirectX11 futures as I could, including tessellation, image-based reflections, multi-sample anti-aliasing, deferred shading and bokeh depth of field.

The main trick for creating the scene was finding the best ways to use the features so that they would make sense and enhance the scene. I chose to give the floor a glossy, waxed-wood look to allow for more reflections. I decided to only use tessellation on the brick wall, as this was the only section of the scene that was really enhanced by the effect. I tried to keep the depth of field effect as subtle as possible, so that it would enhance the aesthetic without drawing too much attention.